XVI. CHAPTER that as Congress had directed the seventy-fours to be built, and had appropriated money for that purpose, yards 1802. must of necessity be hired or purchased, and that experience in building the frigates had proved that to purchase was altogether the cheaper. It was attempted, also, to abolish the Mint, but that did not succeed. Another small saving was made by the repeal of the late Judiciary Act, which formed, indeed, the great measure of the session. It was early brought forward by Brecken ridge in the Senate, and the speeches upon it constitute the earliest reported debates of that body. Gouverneur Morris took the lead for the Federalists, and greatly dis tinguished himself. Before the debate was over, the greater part of the senators had spoken. Jan. 6. The Judiciary Act, and especially the appointments made under it, had been held up to popular odium from the moment of its passage as an unworthy maneuver, having no other object except to plunder the treasury for the beneft of the Federal leaders, ousted by the public voice from the control of the other departments of the government. Several of the state Legislatures had instructed their senators and representatives in Congress to urge the immediate repeal of the act. Returns of the business hitherto transacted by the Federal courts were moved for and obtained, from which it was argued that the late change was entirely unnecessary, especially as the Sedition Law had expired, while the proposed repeal of the internal duties, and the dimunition of suits by British creditors, would still further diminish the busi ness of the courts. It was maintained, on the other side, that the new system had become necessary through the exigencies of justice; and even admitting that the provision made by it was somewhat more ample than was necessary, that REPEAL OF THE JUDICIARY ACT. 441 XVI. was an error on the right side, and would save to suitors, CHAPTER in the prompt decision of cases, vastly more than the new system would cost. Besides, those superfluities might 1802. be retrenched without repealing the act. Indeed, a reestablishment of the old system was quite out of the question. It was also urged, and with great positiveness, that, whether the act was good or bad, as the new judges had been appointed for life, that appointment amounted in substance to a contract on the part of the public, which, consistently with the spirit of the Constitution, could not be set aside. To none of these arguments would the Republicans listen; and the bill for repealing the late act finally passed the Senate, sixteen to Feb. 3. fifteen-one of the administration members being absent, and another (Ogden, of New Jersey) voting in the negative. In the House the debate was renewed with still great- Feb. 13. er earnestness. Giles, in the course of it, made a furious onslaught upon the whole judiciary system, and, indeed, upon the entire policy of the late administrations. At length, by means of a midnight session, now first resorted to for such a purpose, the Committee of the Whole was forced to report the bill, which presently passed the House, fifty-nine to thirty-two. Eustis, the Boston representative, was the only administration member who voted against it. Jefferson appears to have been very doubtful, at least previous to the meeting of Congress, whether the judges had not a freehold in their offices of which they could not constitutionally be deprived. But he did not hesi tate to sign the act. Nor, indeed, whatever might be thought of the expediency of the repeal, could there be any solid doubt of the power of Congress in the matter, the repeal being, as it was, a bona fide one, and not a March 1 March 3 XVI. CHAPTER mere trick to deprive the judges of their offices, with intent to establish those offices anew and to give them 1802. to others. Having thus destroyed the work of the Federalists, a April 29. bill was brought in and presently passed by which the terms of the Supreme Court were reduced to one annually, which a majority of the judges was authorized to hold. Instead of three circuits as formerly, six were constituted, but somewhat differently from those of the repealed act, Maine, Kentucky, and Tennessee not being included in the arrangement. A single judge of the Supreme Court was to be assigned to each of these circuits; to hold semi-annual courts in each district, with the district judge for an associate. In case they differed on a point of law, the matter was to go up by certificate to the Supreme Court. This system, with some addition to the number of Supreme Court judges, and an increase of circuits and districts, remains in force to the present day (1851). It answered well enough for a certain period, but its inadequacy has long since become fully apparent; and the almost hopeless accumulation for years past of business before the Supreme Court gives but too abundant occasion, at least to the unfortunate suitors, to lament that the act of 1801 was ever repealed. While the Senate were busy with the repeal of the Judiciary Act, the House attacked the internal taxes, including the duties on domestic distilled spirits, and on licenses to retail them, the stamp duties, and the excises on refined sugar, sales at auction, and pleasure carriages. The gross produce of these taxes was about a million annually; but, deducting the cost of collection, and the stamp duties, just about to expire, the nett revenue would be about $600,000, of which $500,000 was derived from the tax on distilled spirits. The objection urged REPEAL OF THE INTERNAL TAXES. 443 XVI. to these taxes was the expensiveness of the collection in CHAPTER proportion to the product-the principal burden of a treatise by Gallatin published several years before-to 1802. which were added the old arguments as to their antirepublican character, and the system of espionage which they made necessary. Griswold insisted that, before repealing these taxes, the House ought first to take up a resolution which he had offered for indemnifying the sufferers by French spoliations whose claims on France had been given up under the convention with that country, as modified first by the Senate and then by Bonaparte, and lately ratified by the president in its modified form, the consideration being the release of the United States from the obliga tions of the former French treaties. But, without committing themselves as to the validity of this claim, or stopping to inquire into it, the House refused to be thus diverted from their predetermined course. It was next suggested that, if a reduction of taxes were practicable, it ought to be made, not on distilled spirits, a pernicious luxury, but on tea, coffee, sugar, and salt, articles of necessary consumption, taxed under the existing tariff fifty per cent. on their foreign cost. Special reasons were also urged why the system of internal revenue should not be abolished. That revenue was a sure resource, and in the fluctuations to which foreign trade was exposed, the country might yet be driven to rely upon it. After much experience, the machinery for its collection had been brought into good working order, and it would be well to keep it up against time of need, since to reconstruct it anew would be an affair of labor and delay. But this argument also, the force of which became evident enough some ten or twelve years after, now passed unheeded. CHAPTER XVI. Of all subjects of taxation, there seemed to be none fitter than distilled spirits. The other internal taxes 1802. produced but little, and might be repealed; but this, it was urged, ought to be retained for moral as well as financial reasons Weighty as this argument was, the majority well understood, though they did not say so, that no greater boon could be conferred upon a very zealous and noisy portion of the Republican party than the repeal of this same tax, which Jefferson himself had pronounced "execrable," and to which Gallatin and others had stimulated a passive resistance, resulting at length in actual insurrection. The repeal, also, had the addi tional recommendation of getting rid of another batch March 21. of obnoxious office-holders. It had been decided upon as a party measure, and was carried sixty-one to twentyfour, several of the Federalists being absent or omitting March 31. to vote. It passed the Senate soon after by a like party division. By a very unusual practice, several calls for information, without being objected to or debated, were silently voted down by the majority, whom the Federalists stigmatized in consequence as the "dumb Legislature." A fourth recommendation of the president was carried April 13. out by the passage of an act repealing the late impediments placed in the way of the naturalization of foreigners, and re-enacting the provisions of the act of 1795, which still continue in force. The retrenchments recommended by the president and adopted by Congress had in view not only the repeal of the internal taxes, but the provision of means for the prompt reduction of the public debt, always a great bugbear to Jefferson. Gallatin, who aspired to rival Hamilton as a financier, but whose best claims in that respect had thus far been exhibited in a strict adherence to the |